Throwing a lifeline as Wick Coastguard Rescue Station issues plea for volunteers – Have you got what it takes to help save lives around our coastline?
A visit by the John O'Groat Journal to learn a little about how an emergency service operates in Wick led to a plea for volunteers to help with the local coastguard.
Ewen Scott, senior coastal operations officer at Wick Coastguard Rescue Station, works full-time at the town's sector base by the harbour and had invited the paper to have a look at the facilities sited there, especially the new defibrillator kit.
Lifesaving defibrillators have been given to remote Highland communities, thanks to an initiative from HM Coastguard (HMC) and Ewen explained a little about these devices. "Coastguard rescue officers have been trained to use them for a number of years but now the service has invested a lot of money to get one for every blue light vehicle within the coastguard. Every situation that one of our teams will go to now they will have it to hand – there won't be delay in sourcing one."
Ewen explained how HMC has defibrillators for adults and special paediatric ones designed for children under the age of eight. The HMC personnel carry various other pieces of equipment to deal with trauma situations, such as special tourniquets to stem catastrophic bleeding.
The new defibrillators mean extra lifesaving capability at emergencies and helps to fill some critical ‘gaps’ to bring access to Automatic External Defibrillators (AEDs) for people in the UK’s most remote communities. Nearly 500 AEDs are now available in HMC’s emergency response vehicles, coastal officer and divisional commander vehicles and all its rescue coordination centres. AEDs are also in all other buildings belonging to the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, including marine offices around the UK, adding extra protection for employees in the event of heart-related incident at work.
"There's been a roll-out of [defibrillators] across the whole country and all the teams in Caithness carry them now. It cuts out the time to find them which can help save lives," added Ewen.
He showed how each vehicle carries a "casualty care bag" along with smaller packs when teams are out on a search. Training is integral to how coastguard operatives are able to deal with casualties. "New entrants train over three weekends doing casualty care training, water training and search training both on the coast and inland," he said.
"If someone has fallen down a cliff, for instance, they have all the necessary equipment to hand. We don't carry analgesia [painkiller medication] but our rope technician could take a paramedic down a cliff to administer that if needed."
In August 2019 a multi agency team assembled at the ruins of Castle Sinclair-Girnigoe near Wick to rescue a boy who slipped and fell over a ledge, injuring himself and becoming trapped at the bottom of a difficult-to-access narrow gully, just above the approaching rising tide. Coastguard personnel, along with other emergency crew, managed to reach the boy and an ambulance paramedic provided pain relief and medical aid until further assistance arrived. The dramatic scene when the boy was winched aboard the HMC helicopter was captured in a series of images reproduced in the John O'Groat Journal at the time.
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Dramatic cliff rescue at Girnigoe Castle
Ewen recalled the event saying: "The one thing I remembered was the multi-agency work, with police and ambulance, being a very positive thing. We have done training events with the ambulance, lifeboat and other services before."
He also explained how the other HMC members from Area 2 are volunteers and carry out rescues across the north Highlands from Applecross and around the coast to Inverness. "The teams based in those areas all have similar equipment and live locally. We're looking to recruit new people in Dornoch and Melvich especially. Ideally, if there are people in Reay and Portskerra who would be interested in volunteering they can get in touch."
The coastguard agency has three teams based in Caithness at Wick, Duncansby and Scrabster and assist with coastal rescue as well as inland waterways if requested.
If you are interested in volunteering for the coastguard please visit www.gov.uk/volunteer-as-a-coastguard for more information. There is also a HMC Facebook page at: www.facebook.com/HMCoastguardHighland/
"We've had good people move on and leave the team so we're looking to recruit," added Ewen.